Human rights issues should never be put to a vote, a visiting human rights advocate said yesterday, adding that the passage of three referendums on LGBT rights on Nov. 24 was comparable to laws passed in Nazi Germany.
In his opening address at the International Forum on Freedom and Democracy in Taipei, Bruce Knotts, executive director of the Unitarian Universalist Association’s UN office, a non-governmental organization (NGO), said that such issues “should never be put to a vote as Taiwan has just done with regard to same-sex couples.”
The Constitution guarantees the rights of same-sex couples to marriage equality, but Protestant Christian churches in Taiwan organized referendums in opposition to an interpretation issued by the Council of Grand Justices, Knotts said.
Photo: Lu Yi-hsuan, Taipei Times
“This is called democracy because it asks for a democratic process to rule on whether a group of people should enjoy equal protection under the law or not?” he asked, adding that in 1930s Germany, the Nuremberg Laws that stripped citizens identified as Jewish of their civil rights were also passed by a parliamentary vote.
“The road to the death camps started with the trappings of populist democracy,” he said.
Knotts’ remarks came after Taiwanese voted on four questions related to LGBT rights, including a question defending the Civil Code’s definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman, which was backed by 72.5 percent of voters who cast a ballot, while another on protecting the rights of same-sex couples through legislation other than amendments to marriage laws in the Civil Code passed with 61.1 percent support.
The third question, against including homosexuality in gender education at schools, was supported by 67.4 percent of ballots cast.
Two other proposals, submitted by LGBT rights advocates, were rejected by similarly large margins.
Those two proposals called for the Civil Code to be amended to allow same-sex marriage and for the inclusion of education on gender equality, including subjects related to homosexuality, in school curriculums.
The council in May last year ruled that the definition of marriage in the Civil Code was unconstitutional and ordered that legislation be passed within two years to allow marriage between “two people,” not just a man and a woman.
If such regulations are not enacted within two years, same-sex couples are to be allowed to marry under the law by the same process as laid out in the Civil Code, the council said.
The one-day forum was organized by the World League for Freedom and Democracy.
The league is a Taipei-based international non-governmental organization that evolved from the Anti-Communist League and was initiated by Taiwan, South Korea and the Philippines in 1954.
It was renamed in 1990 in an effort to adjust to “global political realities and to attract more people to the freedom and democracy movement.”
TRAGEDY: An expert said that the incident was uncommon as the chance of a ground crew member being sucked into an IDF engine was ‘minuscule’ A master sergeant yesterday morning died after she was sucked into an engine during a routine inspection of a fighter jet at an air base in Taichung, the Air Force Command Headquarters said. The officer, surnamed Hu (胡), was conducting final landing checks at Ching Chuan Kang (清泉崗) Air Base when she was pulled into the jet’s engine for unknown reasons, the air force said in a news release. She was transported to a hospital for emergency treatment, but could not be revived, it said. The air force expressed its deepest sympathies over the incident, and vowed to work with authorities as they
BITTERLY COLD: The inauguration ceremony for US president-elect Donald Trump has been moved indoors due to cold weather, with the new venue lacking capacity A delegation of cross-party lawmakers from Taiwan, led by Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), for the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump, would not be able to attend the ceremony, as it is being moved indoors due to forecasts of intense cold weather in Washington tomorrow. The inauguration ceremony for Trump and US vice president-elect JD Vance is to be held inside the Capitol Rotunda, which has a capacity of about 2,000 people. A person familiar with the issue yesterday said although the outdoor inauguration ceremony has been relocated, Taiwan’s legislative delegation has decided to head off to Washington as scheduled. The delegation
A tourist who was struck and injured by a train in a scenic area of New Taipei City’s Pingsi District (平溪) on Monday might be fined for trespassing on the tracks, the Railway Police Bureau said yesterday. The New Taipei City Fire Department said it received a call at 4:37pm on Monday about an incident in Shifen (十分), a tourist destination on the Pingsi Railway Line. After arriving on the scene, paramedics treated a woman in her 30s for a 3cm to 5cm laceration on her head, the department said. She was taken to a hospital in Keelung, it said. Surveillance footage from a
Another wave of cold air would affect Taiwan starting from Friday and could evolve into a continental cold mass, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Temperatures could drop below 10°C across Taiwan on Monday and Tuesday next week, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. Seasonal northeasterly winds could bring rain, he said. Meanwhile, due to the continental cold mass and radiative cooling, it would be cold in northern and northeastern Taiwan today and tomorrow, according to the CWA. From last night to this morning, temperatures could drop below 10°C in northern Taiwan, it said. A thin coat of snow
RSS